Rye Bread

Bread, it’s so easy to get good bread in Europe (not counting the UK), but once you go elsewhere in the world, you quickly find that good bread is one of those things that is actually not very easy to find. I’d seen the Lugar home bread bar in the food court in the 101 building just outside of Jasons before, but I hadn’t really paid attention to it, as most bakeries here are not all that special. Sure, there’s Mr Mark which is ok, better than most stuff I ate in the UK, but still quite far off the stuff you can get back home.

So today I was wasting some time in the 101 waiting for my girlfriend to get something in the office so we could grab a bite to eat in the food court and spotted a few things in Jasons I wanted to buy that was on sale. Once she turned up we had some food and then got the stuff I wanted, but when we left we took a different route than normally and walked past Lugar home bread bar. Their shop in the 101 looks more like a cafe than a bakery and maybe this is why I gave it a miss before and the poor English on the menu didn’t help either.

However, today they had little bits of their bread cut up for people to taste and I picked up a piece of something that looked like rye bread. To my surprise this tasted very close to something I could’ve bought from a German or maybe Austrian or Swiss bakery. It was slightly chewy and the more you chew it, the more flavour was released. A really tasty bread of a kind I’ve never had in Taiwan before and a real surprise. We also tasted some other kind of rye bread with raisins and we bought a loaf of each, the plain rye was a mere NT$90 while the one with raisins was NT$120. They also have focaccia, rye and chocolate (go figure), some kind of cumin bread and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The main shop is on Anhe road and it looks like they have more stuff on sale there, although I haven’t been there so I can’t really say. They also sells all sorts of cakes and other sweet baked goods, soup, sandwiches and various types of condiments. This is easily a place I’ll get more bread from and it’s the best bakery I’ve found in Taiwan so far and hopefully things will go well for them and they’ll open up more branches. You can find their website here, although it doesn’t seem to be working that well. The exact address of the main shop is No 3, Lane 49, Section 1, Anhe Rd, Da-an district, Taipei and you can call them on 02-2771-7577.

Update: Ok, so we’ve been back a couple of times already. We tried a sort of southern European style bread and it had a really nice and crispy crust it was soft and tasty inside. It was quite expensive, but it was a bigger loaf than the two we tried the previous time. I also had breakfast there and bought something that had a baguette shape, but shorter, but was made with whole grain flour and was very soft and tasty. It was called a smoked beef sandwich, but turned out to be pastrami with salad and pickles as well as a dijon dressing, very tasty and not too pricey at NT$100 with a large cup of tea. Sure, it’s not every day breakfast, but it’s nice as a treat. They serve breakfast from 8.00-10.00 at their shop in the 101.

Update 2: Lugar is still around, although not in the locations above and according to their website they should have a shop in Sogo, but we checked and it’s not there. So make sure you check their website for their locations, both which appears to be not too far from the 101.